Saturday, April 8, 2017

A Breakthrough for Russia’s Truckers Creates Serious Problems for Moscow

Paul
Goble

Staunton, April 8 – As the Russian
long-haul truckers’ strike enters its third week with many routes now paralyzed
and supplies of some goods in short supply and with Moscow clearly uncertain how
to end a work action given the independence and commitment of the drivers, the
truckers have gained an ally in what for many might seem an unexpected place.

Moscow will undoubtedly deploy the
many resources it has at its command to prevent the adoption the measure lest
it cost one of Vladimir Putin’s allies of a major source of funding and even more
lest it become, as actions in Tatarstan often have in the past, a bellwether
for other republics not only in the Middle Volga but in the North Caucasus and
elsewhere.

If indeed Tatarstan were to adopt
this measure and even more if other non-Russian republics and some
predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays were to follow – a step that
would be popular in many of them where the truckers’ movement is strong and
popular – that would undermine Putin’s much-ballyhooed common legal space.

Even more, it could trigger broader
political challenges to the center, with the long-haul truckers’ strike
possibly even playing the role that the strikes of railway workers played a
century ago in Russia and that general strikes have played in Eastern Europe
and the West more generally.

The Kremlin thus has good reasons to
be worried as the fall-out from the truckers’ action begins to affect not only the
market baskets of ordinary Russians but also the power of the regime
itself.At the very least, these risks
raise the stakes of the strike and set the stage for a possible showdown in the
coming week.